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Tourney teams show grad rate improvement

published Monday, March 12, 2012

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The gap between graduation rates for white and African-American players at schools in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament shrunk this year — the first such decline since 2009 — according to a study released Monday.

The annual report by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) shows African-American players’ graduation rates increased from 59 percent to 60 percent in 2012, while white players’ dropped from 91 percent to 88 percent. The disparity was 22 percentage points in 2009.

The overall graduation rate for this year’s tournament teams increased from 66 to 67 percent, and there was a 3 percent increase in teams graduating half their players.

Primary study author Richard Lapchick said the improvements were encouraging, but stressed that the drop in racial disparity was in part because of the slight decrease in the graduation rates of white athletes. Still, any lessening of the gap is positive, he said.

“I think since we got involved with (U.S. Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan and (NAACP president) Ben Jealous three years ago there’ll be a closer attention paid to numbers released today,” Lapchick said. “I think for the NCAA and the colleges and universities, the last thing they want is federal intervention of any kind.”

Information was collected by the NCAA from member institutions for the study. The institute reviewed the six-year graduation rates of each school’s freshman class, or Graduation Success Rates, then calculated a four-class average or Academic Progress Rate.

The NCAA created the APR in 2004 to improve graduation rates, disciplining schools in the form of lost scholarships when they don’t meet the NCAA standard for academic performance. Under the previous NCAA structure, teams that score below 925 lose could up to 10 percent of their scholarships. Poor performance over time could lead to harsher penalties.

After last year’s report, Duncan, along with Lapchick and Jealous, were critical of some of the poor graduation rates and APRs from schools that qualified for the men’s NCAA tournament. A Knight Commission analysis showed 10 of the 68 teams in the men’s tournament in 2011 didn’t meet the NCAA’s APR goal of being on track to graduate at least 50 percent of their players.

Duncan called for the NCAA to ban basketball teams with graduation rates below 40 percent from competing in the NCAA tournament.

The NCAA responded in October by adopting a new standard that raises the APR standard across Division I to 930, equal to a 50 percent graduation rate. It includes a provision that bans all teams below that from participating in the postseason, including all NCAA tournaments and football bowl games for the following year if they don’t have a two-year average score of 930 or a four-year average of 900 on the annual APR.

Teams that receive three straight years of historical penalties (below 900 APR or 45 percent GSR) will face potential scholarship and practice restrictions as well.

Under the newly adopted NCAA standard, 13 teams in this year’s field, including defending champion Connecticut, have APRs below 930, meaning those teams would not be eligible for postseason participation under the future NCAA rules. Other prominent programs below the 930 mark this year include Syracuse and Florida State.

UConn is facing a ban as early as next season.

Numbers for the 2010-11 school year don’t officially come out until May, but UConn scored 826 for 2009-10 and approximately 975 in 2010-11, which would give them a two-year score of just over 900, well below what is needed to qualify for the tournament.

Last month UConn asked the NCAA to impose alternate penalties, including playing a shorter schedule next season, forfeiting the revenue awarded to the Big East for participating in the 2013 tournament, and changing the two-year reporting window for 2013 eligibility to the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons.

That request was refused, but the NCAA will examine changing the reporting year in an April meeting.

Lapchick said some schools in the worst APR position improved, and he hopes there will be sustained progress going forward.

“It’s always risky to go off one year,” he said. “But if they can sustain the progress they made last year, clearly it will be positive for the school and the overall graduation rates.”

He said he hopes the NCAA’s recent actions will only spur greater improvement across the board.

“We’d like to keep pushing the bar higher for schools to perform better,” Lapchick said. “But in the last 3-4 years we feel like we have seen movement by the NCAA to raise the standards of student-athletes getting an education when they come in the door.”

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